


The Oberon Academy Senior/Junior Prom

by NevillesGran



Category: October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crack, F/M, Proto-Luna Torquill/Sylvester Torquill, assorted other characters alluded to or appearing briefly, including many pixies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 06:15:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17617067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: How Patrick Twycross met the love of his life, nearly lost his best friend, and generally, on average, survived senior year.





	The Oberon Academy Senior/Junior Prom

**Author's Note:**

> This fic brought to you by Cascada, the _Mean Girls_ Broadway soundtrack, and the entire discography of _Glee_ (except the Christmas albums.) It was the only way to get the mood right.

OCTOBER:

The first campaign poster for Prom Royalty went up the day after Homecoming. It was 2x3 feet. It was taped on the notice board visible to anyone walking in the school’s front doors. It was a headshot of Amandine Carter in a sleeveless top that you could just  _barely_  tell she was wearing, corn silk hair cascading over one pale shoulder as she looked back at the camera with a shallow wink and bright smile. The tiara on her head looked like it might actually be real metal and jewels, and the caption read, “AMANDINE for PROM QUEEN:  _Vote for the Best_.

Patrick Twycross clicked his tongue in mock dismay. “Election season just starts earlier and earlier every cycle, doesn’t it. Do they even spend any time running the country anymore.”

The only sound at his side was a strangled gasp. Patrick looked over at Simon—Simon Torquill, professional bother and person with whom Patrick had been walking to school since 6th grade—and found that it was a noise of rage. That was weird enough in the presence of any image of Amandine, but, stranger yet, he wasn’t even looking at the much-professed love of his life.

Simon’s gaze had been caught by another poster, on the far side of the atrium but still very visible. It showed most of the features Patrick associated with his best friend—orange hair, weirdly golden eyes, unnecessary grin—but they were couched in a letterman’s jacket and finger guns at the viewer, and the caption, “SYLVESTER for PROM KING: _Captain of Our Hearts <3_”

Simon took several deep breaths, adjusted the sit of his fashionable messenger bag, and announced, “I’m going to kill him.”

“Dude, slow down,” said Patrick. “It’s not—“

“She went to Homecoming with me TWO DAYS AGO!” Simon bellowed.

Patrick did his best to ignore the people staring at them on the way to class, and the fact that he only had about 2 minutes to get to the opposite side of the building before the bell rang. “It’s probably just a coincidence. Amandine is, well, Amandine.” For the sake of his friend, he tried to keep the immense distaste out of his voice. “And Sylvester is kind of an ass, so that’s…”

His attempts to be reassuring not wilted beneath the shadowy mountain of Simon’s stony stare. They were pretty weak attempts anyway. The posters were obviously a pair. Sylvester wouldn’t have done it himself, but as lacrosse captain and three-, likely soon four-time cup winner, he was all but a lock for Prom King, and Amandine certainly would have. She was nothing if not practical.

Patrick sighed. “Am I going to have to go to Prom to help you stuff the ballot box or something.”

“Or something,” Simon muttered darkly, staring into a distance only he could see.

 - - - - - - - - -

NOVEMBER:

It was late when Patrick was walking out of the shop classroom, late enough that the faux-torchlight lamps by the outdoor pool were lit (a shortcut across campus), and every classroom was dark. Even the theater kids seemed to have gone home—no student was supposed to be about this late without supervision. The school was a husk of its living, daylit self.

But Patrick was President of the one-man Robotics Club, and so he had a key to the shop and a pixie at his shoulder, providing plenty of light to walk by and a comforting sense of company. Still, he was surprised enough to jump nearly out of his skin when there was a creaking noise and hurried steps several feet above his head, and a gleeful voice shouted, “CANNONBALL!”

He turned just in time to get slapped in the face by a wave of water that had to have come from, like, an elephant or something, or a strangely pool-bound Loch Ness Monster.

But what rose from the pool was no cryptid—or maybe she was. She was certainly effervescent, and too beautiful to believe. Her dark hair streamed like a banner; her bathing suit was the school dark green and bright yellow transformed on her form to the enticing tangle of kelp and shining scales of tropical fish. Herdark skin sparkled with water like diamonds in rich loam. She crested from the depths like a wave, like a mountain, like Ariel against the rock in that iconic screencap from  _The Little Mermaid_.

She treaded water and graced Patrick with her gaze, haloed by the fluorescent lights on the rippling water. “Hey, if you’re here for a free show, you can get fucking lost or I can maul you with a pool chair.”

“Um,” said Patrick.

The vision began to look truly peeved. “I did shout. You’re the idiot who was right next to the pool without swim gear.”

“Um,” said Patrick, and then, manfully, “Yeah.”

She looked over his shoulder, concern shaping the purse of her velvet lips (okay, what he assumed were her velvet lips. Chlorine wasn’t kind to anyone’s skin.)

“Is your little…robot…thing…okay?” she asked. “Water isn’t usually great for fiddly electronics.”

“My…shit!” Patrick shrugged his backpack off as he spun, and pushed the momentum into pulling off his coat as well. He glanced at it quickly. Still dry on the inside, okay. “Violet! Land– fucknothatswet–!“

With a grace that would have surprised anyone who saw him half a second ago, he lunged and caught the wobbling little drone on his jacket before she could try to settle into a puddle. “There we go. I’ve got you.” He tried to pat her casing, and yanked his hand back when sparks flew out of the LEDs, along with a distressed fizzing noise. “Okay, that’s bad. Violet, shut down.”

The drone continued to blink and sputter.

“Okay. Okay.” He braved the sparks—fucking ouch—to unhook the casing and hit the manual off-switch. Violet’s wing lights went out and she stopped twitching, though the worrying fizzing noise didn’t stop.

“I’ve seen those around school,” said the vision from the pool. She was out, now, and looking over his arm,though careful to keep her deliquescent distance. “Mostly being nuisances. Um. In a fun way Are they yours?”

“Yeah. I call them pixies. Because Faeries, you know?” His tongue poked between his teeth as he peered at the drone’s sparking innards.

“My name is Dianda Lorden,” she said abruptly. A challenge. “I’m new this year. On scholarship.”

“Congratulations on being smarter than the rest of us are rich,” Patrick said distractedly, and pushed the coat into her arms. “Hold this for a moment? I need to get her—um, it—dry.”

Without further ado, he pulled his t-shirt over his head. It was slightly covered in grease, from an afternoon (and evening, and half the night) in the workshop, but unlike water, that was supposed to be in a pixie’s mechanisms.

“Um,” said Dianda.

Patrick paused, shirt halfway over his head as it suddenly occurred to him he was almost certainly being what Simon would define as “weird and dorky, even for you.”

“Um?”

“Um.”

“Diana?” he said, as he finished pulling off the shirt and applied it to his fizzing drone instead. “I’m Patrick. Twycross. Patrick Twycross.” It was nearly midnight in the middle of November, approaching freezing, but  _water wasn’t supposed to be in a pixie’s mechanisms_.

“Dian _da_ ,” she repeated firmly, and didn’t even shiver as she stood there in a one-piece swimsuit, still dripping water, and held Violet steady. “Nice to meet you, Patrick.”

\- - - - - - - - -

DECEMBER:

The things to know about Oberon Academy are these:

  1. It is ridiculously expensive to attend. One of Those schools. They had a lacrosse team and field, two private swimming pools, a mechanics workshop and a computer lab, and classes of ten students or fewer. 
    1. A significant proportion of the student body had been given more birthday checks than expressions of parental love in their lifetimes.
  2. Nevertheless, as a school they value themselves for their affinity for the…less affluent. A select number of scholarships are offered each year, in order that the less fortunate might be benevolently raised above their socioeconomic classes of birth. There are courses in practical economics, fashion design, and “shop”, though that has shifted over the years from carpentry to robotics and coding. Seniors are required to serve a period as TAs, though it is generally accepted that as soon as college applications are over, they will stop doing any work whatsoever.
  3. The politics of students, teachers, and board alike are genuinely fairly liberal, socially speaking. This is what happens when you choose the mascot “Faeries” decades before the term becomes pejorative, and when it does, you dig in your heels and declare yourselves nondiscriminatory.  
  4. Because at least half of the student body has rarely received genuine affection in their home lives, and they’ve been taught to value status and wealth above all, Prom Royalty elections are Serious Fucking Business.
  5. The lacrosse team lost two games due to assorted injuries and ill chance in late autumn, and Amandine Carter took Simon Torquill to the Winter Formal. They were color-coordinated and almost glowing; Sylvester Torquill was spotted frowning as he danced with head cheerleader Treasa Riordan. By then, Treasa had crowned posters of her own in every hallway and classroom, but everyone knew she was going to lose gracelessly. Even at this least important dance of the year, the message was clear: victory or social death.



\- - - - - - - - -

 JANUARY:

“Amandine Carter,” Patrick mused. He sat on his bedroom floor, sorting out bits and pieces from his latest shipment of robotics parts. Maker kits were a boon to his existence, but they never organized things how he wanted them organized. “How do I begin to describe Amandine Carter.”

“Are you seriously quoting Mean Girls at me?” asked Dianda. She was lying on his bed with a pre-calc textbook and the bundle of notes Patrick had saved from last year, and an old yearbook which she was actually studying.

"How else do you think I should do it."

She considered for a moment. "Fair enough. But you have to do the whole thing."

"I can't do that without looking it up," said Patrick, already getting out his phone. A quick google gave him what he needed. "Okay...Simon would say she's flawless. He's been in love with her since she moved to town—next door to the Torquills, actually—in middle school."

"Got that," said Dianda. "Next?"

"Treasa Riordan would say she has two Fendi purses and a silver Lexus, because she never learned that people's worth can be expressed in things that aren't expensive."

Dianda snorted. "Yep."

"Etienne—he's a lacrosse defender—would say he heard her hair is insured, because he can make anything boring. Car commercials...is it racist to say Lily, just because she's actually Japanese? Yeah. And she'd actually know, not just 'heard', because she and Amandine are actually friends."

"I don't understand that," Dianda complained. She'd turned to lie perpendicular to the direction of the bed, feet against his wall and hair falling over the edge. "Lily is actually really nice, and a great swim captain. How is she friends with that..."

Patrick shrugged. "They were both new at the same time, and Lily's truly, genuinely nice. _I_  don't get it."

"Okay." Dianda folded her arms, upside-down. "Back to the roll call."

"As my lady commands." Patrick scrolled through the wikiquote. "So, car commercials…put a pin in that for now. Dawn—Ms. Winterrose's younger sister—would know Amandine's favorite movie is Varsity Blue, or whatever, because she knows friendly things about everyone. 'Met John Stamos' would definitely- sorry, wait. Tybalt would say..." He thought a second, and straightened. "'One time, aloft, upon a beast of air, our Amy met John Stamos walking there. He said that she looked beauteous and fair, and...something something something something rhyme.'" He dropped back to a slouch. "I can't spontaneously speak in verse."

Dianda clapped anyway, and Patrick blushed.

"What  _is_  it with that guy?" she asked.

"He was bitten by a radioactive William Shakespeare in seventh grade," Patrick said with a shrug. As intermittent special effects tech (they paid him), he'd had to explain the Drama Club President more than once.

Dianda laughed aloud, and he thought it had probably been worth every excruciating, poetry-filled second.

She sat up suddenly. "Wait! If we take the Mean Girls thing—sorry to change the script—"

Patrick gestured that it was fine by him, and also that she could have his soul if she wanted.

"—But if Amandine is Regina George, and we assume the same 'three most popular people with two lagging after the other’ thing, and one is pretty but kind of dumb and the other keeps secrets in their perfect hair..."

"Uh-huh..." He had a horrible feeling that he knew where this was going. 

She pointed at him triumphantly. "Then you are best friends with Gretchen Weiners."

Patrick put his head in his hands with a groan. It was a thought he had had before.

\- - - - - - - - -

FEBRUARY:

Patrick loved the Oberon Academy robotics workshop. He’d taken the class Freshman year and TA’d it since Sophomore, and spent most of his free time there as well. His parents were accommodating of his hobbies, but wary of giving him the room he really needed to spread out a bank of tools and wires and half a dozen drones in progress at any given time. Here, everything was very  _reliable_. His table had been so thoroughly claimed that it was only disturbed when someone needed to use a screwdriver he’d left out. Problems could be solved with soldering and debugging. Patrick was there about 50% of the day on a good day, and everyone else came and went on schedule.

For instance, Simon could be relied upon to stride in and dramatically fling himself over the nearest chair about 5 minutes into the period, dependent on both of them being free at the same time. Freshman year, when he’d cheerfully ridden being Patrick’s table partner to an A in the class, he’d even been there by the bell most days.

Today, the bell for 3rd period had barely finished ringing when he appeared and draped himself over the nearest chair like a Renaissance painting of a Christian martyr.

“I’ve lost,” he said. “I’ve lost, Patrick. She’s taking Sylvester to the Valentine’s Day dance.”

Patrick bothered to look up from the gears he was fitting, because Simon sounded genuinely despondent. “That’s bad,” he allowed.

“It’s the end.” Simon’s arm was cast over his eyes, as though the fluorescent lights overhead were too scorching for his wounded heart. “If you go the Valentine’s Dance with someone, you’re a couple, and couples go the Prom together. And get crowned King and Queen. And get married in an extravagant but tasteful ceremony at Versailles one month after graduating college, as is romantically early but socially appropriate.”

“Okay, that’s too far,” Patrick said exasperatedly. “Even if you don’t win Prom King—“

“Patrick.” Simon sat up and looked him dead in the eye. “Do you honestly believe that my brother isn’t going to marry the girl he goes to Senior Prom with.”

“…No,” Patrick admitted. Sylvester Torquill was the protagonist of a high school sports movie; it was a fact they had all accepted years ago.

“So I’ve  _lost_.” Simon put his head down on the table, careful to avoid the worst of the organized chaos.

Patrick patted his back sympathetically, and took the unviewed opportunity to mouth  _Good riddance_.

But he was a good friend, so he tried to change the subject to something lighter. "Do you want to see the new pixie designs? I'm totally rehashing it, trying to get them ambulatory rather than just flying, so they can—well, for a challenge, really. There’s more maneuverability options in the air, but if they’re going to walk, much less bound, they need to balance way more. The gyros are…”

His ramble faded in the face of Simon's continued moroseness. Patrick patted him on the back again. "Hey, there's still hope. Breaking up with someone between Valentine's Day and Prom is a dramatic move, but Amandine loves drama. You should try proving your devotion to her—steal her a plastic seal from That House, or propose marriage before Sylvester can, or something.”

("That House" stood at the end of the block a couple streets north of the Academy. It was old. It was worn down. It was universally hated by every aesthetics-minded homeowner in the neighborhood, and feared in equal measure, as was the old woman who lived in it. Or possibly young woman? Nobody knew. She never appeared, except to yell at anyone who touched her lawn, and then she wore a hood. The lawn was covered in plastic seals, like plastic flamingos but less pink and much more seal-shaped.

Every neighborhood has at least one house like this. If you don't know which it is, it's your house.)

"That's not a bad idea," Simon said thoughtfully. "I could go after school..."

"Oh god, you're not going to actually steal a seal?" Patrick leaned away from him, in case crazy old lady vengeance was catching. "That woman is terrifying. Don't do it, Simon. She'll turn you into an equal weight of spiders. She'll rip your soul out of your chest and keep it as a bird. You will become one of the seals."

Simon waved his hands. "No, no. I'd do it, for Amandine, but I'm not insane. Oh!" He patted his pockets. "Speaking of crazy animal women. I got you something, to help you with your own lady-love."

"She's not..." said Patrick, and then stopped because he wasn't sure which part of the sentence he'd been going to argue with. "If you mean Dianda, I...honestly can't think of an interpretation of 'crazy animal woman' that isn't either wildly racist or at least classist as hell."

And that pissed him  _off_ , with a ferocity that startled him.

"Give me some credit," Simon said with a flash of irritation. "No, I mean Luna. You know, the furry?" He found what he'd been searching for and passed it over: an index card stamped with a rose and signed in elegant calligraphy. "She's growing illicit roses in the greenhouse again, and selling them. I got you a gift card, so you can ask, yes, Dianda, to the Valentine's Dance, in proper style."

"Oh. Um." Patrick took the card like it might catch fire. "I'm not sure if I should ask her? I don't know if she even likes me. And I don't dance, and neither does she. I don't think she even likes dances—have you talked to her? Without me? What did she say?"

"She likes you, and you like her," Simon said firmly. "We don't travel in the same social circles—" a flicker, just the faintest flicker of scorn on his face—"but that's enough for me to think well of her, and know that you need to actually  _ask her out_."

He wrapped Patrick's grip more firmly around the card and added wistfully, "And then, when I finally win Amandine's heart, we can go on double-dates."

"Hm," said Patrick, and did not comment that his lady-love thought that Simon's was "a bitch who needs to be taken down”—or that he himself, half the time, could not help but agree.

\- - - - - - - - -

MARCH:

" _This_  is the new competition? When I heard somebody else had signed up, I assumed it would be another gutsy cheerleader, or at least one of the drama geeks putting on a pathetic show."

There was only one flaw, societally speaking, in the beauty of Amandine. She was slim, pale, and blond; her clothing was designer and her makeup was never less than flawless. But she was tall, always had been, so that even when the boys had caught up with the girls' growth spurts, she was as tall or taller than most of them.

She had used it to perfect the art of looking down her nose at someone, until they felt small enough to hide under a log. Patrick had been on the receiving end more than once. His preferred method of coping was to apologize for needing Simon for a moment, grab him by whatever means necessary, and run.

Unfortunately, he was trapped in the middle of the school hallway next to Dianda, and Simon was standing very plainly opposite him, next to Amandine.

"But no. It's a scholarship girl, the daughter of a fishmonger." Amandine's tone grew, if possible, more scornful. "A _junior_."

Dianda didn't quail. Her arms were folded across her chest. Along the walls of lockers stood an audience: the rest of Amandine's usual hangers-on, including Sylvester and  _his_  usual gaggle of lacrosse bros. Seniors, juniors, sophomores, and freshmen. A couple of drama kids holding what Patrick distantly noted, in an about-to-die way, were almost certainly live cats.

"I'm sorry to disappoint." The ice in Dianda's words would have sunk the Titanic. "Not everyone's parents can be professional absentees."

Gasps were audible. Patrick didn't think he'd ever been this scared and turned on in his life.

\- - - - - - - - -

APRIL:

Then Dianda stopped talking to him. Or texting him. Or looking at him. Patrick woke up at 3pm one Sunday, sleeping off an all-nighter as he raced towards his deadline for the new, floor-capable pixies, and realized that the first person he wanted to tell about it was her. Not celebrating Valentine’s Day together had been a coward’s move and he had never even asked her out once—the thing with ice cream probably didn’t count—but he  _really_  wanted to go to Prom with her.

But when he texted her “Hey”, she replied “Why are you even speaking to me?” followed by, “Don’t.” And then she didn’t reply to anything else. When he tried various apps, he found that she’d blocked him on all of them. When he tried to speak to her in the halls, she walked faster.

He’d barely spoken with Simon since March, either. Patrick had never had many friends, and that cut out roughly all two of them.

School commenced sucking. Even robotics could barely cheer him up. Even the students in his TA period avoided talking to him, probably because he was on the outs with every popular person in the school. Patrick didn’t care much about that on principle—it was great that a couple people seemed to be avoiding him on behalf of Dianda’s Prom Queen campaign, actually—but it still stung.

He finally caught up with her at the foot of the stairs, when she was picking up some dropped books because one of Amandine’s cheerleader supporters had “accidentally” bumped into her.

“What did I do wrong?” he asked, bewildered, kneeling to help. “Whatever it was, I apologize—”

“Ha! You, apologize!” She shoved him in the chest. “You broke up with me via the  _guidance counselor_ , and you want to apologize?!”

She stalked off, leaving Patrick holding a few spare papers.

He asked quietly, “We were officially dating?”

\- - - -

There was nothing else for it: he had to visit the guidance counselor.

Ms. Winterrose wasn’t terrifying or anything. She did have Amandine’s technique of staring down her nose like you belonged on a compost heap, all the more impressive because she pulled it off while being about half a foot shorter than average. But it was mostly just weird that there was a woman who was definitely, face-wise, Dawn Winterrose’s older sister, but had always, as far as Patrick knew, worked at the school, and might not age, and might be a witch from the beginning of time just like the crazy seal woman from That House. She had a rose preserved in a glass case on her desk, like the enchanted one in _Beauty and the Beast_.

Simon was her TA third period, which was Patrick’s free period, so he had to go after school instead.

Her office door was open, but she was reading papers. He knocked. 

“Yes, Mr. Twycross?” she said without looking up.

“I know you have, like, student-counselor confidentiality, but, um…”

Patrick drew himself together. This mattered, dammit. “Have you spoken with Dianda Lorden recently? She’s a junior. She said you told her that we…”

Ms. Winterrose sighed, and put down her papers. “I see. Come in and sit down—and leave that ridiculous thing outside. Close the door behind you.”

Scowling, Patrick gently shooed Goldie the pixie off his shoulder, where he had barely noticed her perching. Every other teacher in the school had accepted the fact that he almost always had one around.

The temperature dropped with the door closed. Ms. Winterrose always kept her AC all the way up.

“Patrick,” she said, and steepled her fingers as she looked directly at him. “I did speak with Miss Lorden, but I am pleased to see that you have come to speak with me yourself. Yes, I understand that you have grown fond of her—‘going out’, I think kids call it these days?”

She winked, which was absolutely bewildering. Fortunately, she continued before Patrick had to come up with a response.

“But Dianda Lorden simply isn’t suitable for you, I’m afraid. I told her as such, and I am pleased to see that she followed through on my suggestion.”

“What—you can’t do that!” Patrick sputtered. “That’s not your job!”

“That is precisely my job,” Ms. Winterrose said sharply. She leaned forward, and she wasn’t quite Patrick’s type but she was terrifically pretty up close. Dark hair and red lips and perfect winged eyeliner. “I am a guidance counselor, and the guidance I counsel is thus: you will be graduating in less than two months, so is it really fair to dally with that girl now? I know you know it is only dallying, because I am reliably informed that the closest you’ve come to an actual date was to go out for ice cream.”

“I—“

“And that’s putting aside the  _obvious_  issues with such a relationship.” She sniffed. “Of course, our scholarship students are wonderful, they’ve earned their place, et cetera.… But you will be starting at MIT in August. It may not be the best school in that area, but at least you will be close enough to Harvard to network. Treasa Riordan will be there; I encourage you to speak with her if you feel any duty to your own family’s business legacy.”

“But—”

“I know it’s difficult, at this time in your life.” She smiled…not quite warmly. Perfectly. “And I am pleased that you’ve developed enough spine to talk to me about it. But it truly isn’t an appropriate match, and Miss Lorden knows it as well. You would do best to walk away while the break can be clean.”

She stood. “My office hours are over, now. You may go.”

Reeling with the speed of the lecture, Patrick obeyed. The blast of warmth when he opened the door only served to disorient him further, and with nobody to walk home with, he kept moving reflexively towards his usual shortcut past the pool.

Was she right? Probably. It wasn’t like  _Patrick_  had any idea what he was doing. And he  _was_  going to MIT next year, which was multiple timezones and thousands of miles away, and it  _was_  difficult to imagine introducing Dianda to his parents as a girlfriend, rather than just a…whatever they had been. Which clearly wasn’t much. She sure didn’t care for him, that was clear, and he had never actually tried, much…so why should he care, now…

He pulled out his phone as he walked, and scrolled down to his last, confused text to her. The whole string of unanswered pleas looked pathetic, now.  _Fine, it’s over_ , he typed, and his thumb hovered over the Send arrow.

“On your left!”

Still staring at his phone, Patrick moved to the right, and did not slip, because it was damp tile but he wasn’t a 100% uncoordinated mess of a human being. Only like…85%.

And then someone coursed our of the water, grabbed him around the waist, and  _yanked_ , and Patrick barely had time to gasp before he hit the water, head over heels on top of Dianda.

He rose sputtering, held afloat in her strong arms while she treaded water. “ _What_ –“

She kissed him.

Absolutely nothing else mattered.

After an unknown amount of time, slow, sarcastic clapping became audible to his water-logged ears. Very reluctantly, but with an awareness of the familiar voice that had pushed him within reach of the water, Patrick pulled lips and gaze away from the vision in his arms and looked instead at the young man watching from the edge of the pool.

Simon stood there, perfectly dry, with Goldie hovering over one shoulder and a cat-got-the-canary grin.

"Gross," said Simon.

"What are you, twelve," said Patrick, who suspected that he himself both looked and sounded like he'd just had a heavy dose of NO2. Also, he was having a little trouble treading water.

"He saw the pixie outside Ms. Winterrose's office and came and got me, and we've sorted everything out," Dianda explained as she mercifully towed him into shallower water. "We're dating, now, and going to Prom together."

Patrick's absolute horror must have shown on his face, because she said, "Me and  _you_ , dumbass. You and I are dating. You are my date to Prom, whether you like it or not." She hesitated, pulling back for a moment. "You do like it, right? I won't–"

Patrick kissed her. It was even better now that he could stand.

After some more time, Simon coughed politely. Dianda affectionately shoved Patrick's head in his direction, and, unusually, Patrick beat him to speaking.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I've been a kind of crappy friend. I've barely helped at all with the Prom King thing—I don't get along with Amandine, but you're still my best friend, and it matters to you. She matters to you."

Simon smiled ruefully. "No,  _I'm_  sorry. I'm the one who made you take sides, when Dianda started running for Queen, and I've been ignoring you ever since. I've been absolutely failing at best friend duties." He crouched, still carefully keeping his pants and nice shoes out of the poolside puddles, and extended a hand. "Bros before hoes?" He glanced hastily at Dianda. "No offense."

"None taken," she said cheerfully. She turned to Patrick, one possessive arm around his waist. "I would, at this point in the relationship, absolutely throw you under a bus for anyone on the swim team." Back to Simon. "I'm not backing out of the Prom Royalty thing, either. It's stupid, but Amandine needs to be told up."

"We'll make a good run-up pair," Simon said a resigned sigh. "It hasn't really been a competition since the lacrosse team won States."

Patrick blinked in surprise. "Even with all the posters, and free chocolate, and blackmail I assume you have on key people?"

"Yeah." Simon's shoulders slumped. "I'll just go stag, and hope Amy has the night she's always dreamed of. At least it will be perfect for her."

An alternate suggestion was at the tip of Patrick's tongue, but he bit it off.

Then he yelped. "My phone! You assholes made me drop my phone in the pool! Where is it?!"

\- - - - - - - - -

MAY:

The Oberon Academy Senior/Junior Prom was held, annually, in the Grand Ballroom of the Hotel Charma, a veritable palace of glass and gilt. For the occasion, for the boisterous youth, only the central chandelier was lit, and the lights around the edges were set to reds, greens, and blues, flashing to match the rhythms of the DJ's music. The punch was in a massive crystal bowl and the cups were red and plastic. The podium on the stage was draped with silk in the school’s gold and green. 

The crowd quieted when Gilad Windermere took the stage, once he had shouted into the microphone once or twice. He was dressed in a collared shirt and khakis, a young man quiet in every class but the social studies ones, and was not remotely in the running for Prom King or Queen—but he was the Senior Class President, and it was his job to announce the winners.

There's no real point in dwelling on that, though Gilad made an attempt to raise the tension with appropriately timed pauses. Sylvester Torquill was the King, because the lacrosse team had won the state championships and he was generally well-liked, and Amandine Carter was Queen, because there had never been any other possible outcome.

\- - -

Reader...oh, Reader....how  _does_  one even begin to explain Amandine Carter? She is not the hero of our story, but, as with almost anything of which she is part, she is at the center of it.

Amandine Carter was not flawless. She owned a great many brandname purses, and, yes, a silver Lexus. Her hair was not insured, though some of her jewelry was. She had once featured in a soft drink commercial, and looked forward to attending Columbia University as a theater major starting the following fall. Her favorite movie was  _The Parent Trap_ , but she would tell anyone who asked that it was a tie between  _Breakfast at Tiffany's_  and "every time in the Twilight movies when Taylor Lautner takes his shirt off." She  _had_ met John Stamos, albeit at a party, and he  _had_  told her she was pretty.

Three times, she won the title of Prom Queen; both times she was permitted to enter and one time she wasn't.

One time, when the class president raised his hand to cue the music for the first dance, she raised her hand to stop him, and took the microphone from his confused, unresisting hand. With an unerring sense of drama, she turned to her royal consort and date for the night.

"I'm sorry, Syl," she said. "You're really sweet, and we make a killer power couple. But a girl's gotta do who a girl wants to do."

And she handed the mic back to Gilad, swept off the stage in her trailing gown—the crowd parted before her, of course—walked up to Simon Torquill, and dipped him into a deep kiss (with enthusiastic consent) in the middle of the dance floor.

\- - -

Before applause and wolf-whistles had a chance to become more than hesitant and scattered, another voice fit for the theater boomed from the rafters. 

"Sirrah!" It called. "The Prom King you may be, and great at that–"

Tybalt, President of the Drama Club swung down from the chandelier, flipping like a trained acrobat and landing almost gracefully on the stage. He recovered his balance quickly, plucked the plastic crown from Sylvester's head, and danced backwards with it on his own, tabby-dyed hair. "–But– I, as ever, am the King of Cats!”

Several things happened on cue:

The DJ started playing "Check Yes Juliet" by We The Kings.

Every door in the ballroom opened—the discrete side door for the bathrooms, the even more discrete door for the waitstaff, and the grand, gold-plated double doors at the entrance.

The assorted members of the Drama Club, standing ready at those doors, released a mixed assortment of live and robotic cats into the room, who raced through yowling, chasing spots of light, attacking feet, or going directly for the punch bowl, as was their wont. The theater kids raced in after them, mostly not yowling, and hit the dance floor with an exuberance known only to, well, theater kids. It's a specialized breed.

\- - -

Sylvester Torquill, captain of the lacrosse team and Senior/Junior Prom King, stood alone on the stage. The spotlight was still his, but he had lost his date, his crown, and all attention of the crowd. Even Tybalt had bounded off the stage again, to join the dance. The music was playing, there were cats everywhere—some, small robots shaped roughly like cats—and people other than the Drama Club people had even started to sway.

"Hey," said a voice at his side.

He looked over and then down, at a vaguely familiar girl about a foot shorter than he was. She had dark brown hair and somewhat overly mascara'd eyes, and a dress that mostly served to draw attention to the three fox tails attached to the back.

"Hey," he said, searching his memory. "Um...Luna, right?"

"Yeah." She held one of the robots in her arms, unflinching from the thorny roses wrapped around its neck and back. "I kind of thought someone should apologize for ruining your big moment. You're not actually a horrible person."

"That's fine," he said, and stepped self-consciously out of the heat of the spotlight. "Wait- you were part of this? You're not a theater person."

"Oh, it was a vast conspiracy." Her grin was positively vulpine as she held forth the robo-cat. "I provided the decorations. You like them?" She petted it down the back, seemingly unaffected by the thorns. "They don’t look much like cats, really, so I've been calling these ones 'rose goblins.'”

"That's neat," he said truthfully. It did look a lot more like a goblin than a cat—the face was slightly humanoid, in a recognizable way that made Sylvester suddenly damn sure of at least one other person involved in the conspiracy, and the limbs were uneven, though clearly functional. Well over two dozen of the "rose goblins" were bounding around the rooms, disrupting dancers and furniture in equal measure.

"Hey," he burst out, "not to be intrusive or critiquing a woman's appearance or anything, but..." He pointed at the fox tails. "Why do you wear those? I've literally never seen you without one. Is it, like, an anime thing?"

Luna gave him a shy smile, and cradled the rose goblin to her chest. "A little bit," she admitted. "Mostly they just...make me feel more like the person I want to be."

"Oh," said Sylvester, who was captain of the lacrosse team and generally accepted to be the protagonist of a high school sports movie.

With the instincts that had led the Oberon Faeries to four straight lacrosse championships, he stepped a little further out of the spotlight and offered her his hand. "Do you want to dance?"

\- - -

Dianda Lorden, clutched Patrick Twycross's arm, in order that she not fall over laughing. "I knew it! I knew you were doing something with the pixies!"

"I'm sorry!" he said, also gasping with glee. "I'm so sorry, I wanted to tell you, but Tybalt double-dog swore me to secrecy, and blackmailed me with pictures from like second grade."

"It's fine!" She adjusted the strap of her inconveniently floofy dress, which kept falling down one shoulder. At least it had a slit up one side, so she could kick things. "I was the one getting them fish for the live cats. You know they've been collecting strays for months?"

A particularly fat, fluffy orange cat approached with a plaintive meow, and she shooed it away.

"I was wondering about that!" Patrick shook his head in admiration, and took a step back to avoid a cheerleader jumping back to avoid a cat chasing a four-footed drone. "They really went all-out with the secrecy. I don't think anyone but Tybalt knows how many moving parts there were of this."

"I let them into the ballroom early." Gilad stepped up on the other side of him, flashing lights glinting off his glasses and red solo cup in one hand. "There's a surplus in the events budget; we can afford the lost deposit."

Sibelle, Junior Vice President, held his hand. "We're going out for karaoke with a couple other people. Do you guys want in?"

Patrick held Dianda's hand, and looked around the room. The live cats had mostly settled down, either in hiding, being pet by happy high-schoolers, or fled as soon as possible. His heavily modified pixies, aka rose goblins, were mostly still running around, though at least one was stuck in a corner. The music had long-since stopped mattering to what people were doing on the dance floor—Tybalt was throwing his twin sister in the air, her hair dyed white, black, and neon orange to match his usual tabby stripes. Sylvester, who had worn his letterman jacket even to this, was doing something that  _might_  be a waltz with Luna, except that even by Patrick's standards, neither of them could dance. Simon and Amandine were a prom-perfect picture, fashionably dressed and hair only slightly mussed from making out, slow-dancing in the chandelier-lit center of the room as if none of the chaos around them existed at all.

"Will there be ice cream?" Dianda asked. "I could seriously use ice cream.”

"Yeah," said Patrick, and whistled sharply. The nearest rose goblin trotted clumsily into place at his heel—he had never quite perfected the gyroscopics. He turned away from the dance floor and squeezed her hand. "Let's go."

And they went, and eventually graduated high school, and lived happily ever after. And, Reader...

It was _awesome_.

**Author's Note:**

> I walked out of this fic shipping Simon/Patrick/Dianda, like, way more than I'd intended to. 
> 
> Not sure what to write in a comment? Tell me your favorite line! What made you laugh, or cry, or cover your face in high school-based secondhand embarrassment?


End file.
